Geography reveals just how divided we have become. There are places from which
it appears almost impossible to succeed educationally and others from where it
appears very hard to fail. On any given day a fifth of children in Britain qualify for free
school meals, but only one in a hundred of those children get to go to either Oxford
or Cambridge University. Given that four private schools (and one highly selective
state sixth form college) send more children than do 2000 other secondary schools
to these two universities that statistic is hardly surprising.
The most prestigious one hundred schools secure 30% of all Oxbridge places.
84 of them are private. The national debate on higher education is often accused of being dominated by interest in entry to these two universities, but to many in the top
1% income group (the only people with the financial means to be able to afford to
seriously and significantly influence their children’s chance of entry into those few
schools) these universities are clearly of great interest.
Income inequality has now reached a new maximum and for the first time in a
century even those just below the richest 1% are beginning to suffer, to see their
disposable income drop. For four of the last five years the numbers of children
enrolling in private schools have fallen. So what is our education system being
turned into? Who benefits? Who loses? And with what effects?